We went for a ride yesterday. Well, I went for a ride. The Yankee is in training and so she did something called a brick. This involves swimming and riding and I’ve no idea at all how bricks have entered into this.
So she swam in the neighborhood pool. The Olympic pool was closed, on account of their being no Olympians there that day. (There usually are. We live in a place where she gets to be drowned in the wake of people showing off Olympic ring tattoos. Not a bad perk to the locale.)
We counted out the laps, measuring and doing math. The neighborhood pool is small; she did a lot of laps. And then she hopped on her bike and I hopped on mine and I chased her through the countryside.
She was moving on well. I had great legs, owing to taking a day or two off, perhaps. But I was also going on the longest ride I’ve been on in a while, so I wanted to pace myself.
I caught her on a hill after about eight miles. I’m a little bit stronger on hills and this was a series of three respectable climbs. She caught me again later, I let her play out in front and then chased her down just before home. She took the direct route and I meandered through the neighborhood. It was a 20.75 mile ride. Felt great.
I’d intended to take a few wide pictures to celebrate the day, but there was too much huffing.
Did take this somewhere along the way though:
Pretty as a roadside wildflower can be, it was the three buds on this one that intrigued me.
And now for something beautiful:
That is the Lyrid meteor shower, from space. Did you catch Florida as it moved by?
Astronaut Don Pettit on the ISS took the shots last month and they were converted into the inspiring quasi-video. The Lyrid meteors, dust trails from the comet Thatcher, have been observed from Earth for thousands of years. I learned all of this from a Huntsville reporter.
Finally: the grading is done. Now on to other things.
